Generally considered one of the greatest movies of the seventies and arguably the greatest private eye flick ever made (the only other contender is John Huston's The Maltese Falcon) 1974's Chinatown, which unleashed the character of Los Angeles gumshoe J.J. "JAKE" GITTES upon the world, is a superb private eye mystery and modern-day film noir thriller.

Its original screenplay by Robert Towne is a throwback to the best Hollywood film noirs from the pens of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler in the 30s and 40s. Under Roman Polanski's direction (and his rewriting of the crucial ending) what might have been a merely handsomely-mounted period piece became a classic film that transcended genres, and set off reverberations that still echo today. The film was based on the 1908 Owens River Valley scandal, but the gradual unearthing of secrets under many layers and facades of corruption and deception during a routine PI investigation struck a responsive, and timely, chord during the Watergate era.

The cast is superb, with Jack Nicholson as the slick , and slightly sleazy divorce detective, who gave up on doing the right thing a long time ago, back when he was a cop in Chinatown. Faye Dunaway is the woman, Evelyn Mulray, not so much a femme fatale, as the femme blessée, another person walking wounded, a victim of evil, not it's proponent -- although at first that's not readily apparent. In a great nod to tradition, John Huston (director of The Maltese Falcon) plays Noah Cross, Evelyn's father, rich and powerful, the true symbol of the heart of darkness in this film. And Polanski himself even shows up, in a memorable cameo, as the knife-wielding thug in a white suit who demonstrates to Jake just what happens to people who stick their noses where they don't belong.

Yet, as great as the acting is, as haunting as the score is, as rich as the period detail is, it's the dark, brooding plot, and the masterful skill with which Polanski brings it all home that is the true triumph. In 1937, Los Angeles is in dire need of water. Meanwhile, Jake is hired to follow the LA water commissioner, whose wife claims he's cheating on her.

The lies and betrayals quickly pile up, as Jake pursue's his investigation into what he thinks is just a wandering husband job. For Chinatown is more than just a locale, or a bad memory of Jake's; it serves as metaphor for "the great wrong place", in much the same way Hammett used Poisonville in Red Harvest or Raymond Chandler used Bay City. Chinatown is where evil reigns, and the law does "as little as possible." As several characters say, you may think you know what's going on, but you don't.

Towne's plot veers from blinding sunshine to the darkest of shadows, and it all ends in what is perhaps one of the most downbeat and powerful conclusions in film. The amount of wickedness finally revealed is staggering, as we're subjected to the corruption of politics, money, sex, innocence and even the land itself. Jake is finally back in the oft-alluded to Chinatown, unable to do much but bear witness to the carnage, while the police mop up the mess, and the bad guy rides off into the sunset.

The Maltese Falcon ended with Spade mournfully musing about "the stuff that dreams are made of," but at least Spade could find consolation in having done the right thing. For Jake, and the other survivors of Chinatown, there are no more dreams, just a sense of futility and powerlessness, in the face of such absolute, and absolutely corrupt and unassailable power.

His partner tries to lead him away, saying the only thing left to be said. "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

It's a great noir line, summing up not just an entire era's despair and disillusionment, as the wide-eyed idealism of the sixties was finally nailed shut in the wake of assassinations, pointless wars and Watergate, but also perhaps an entire film genre's. For isn't noir, in the end, about the fact that evil is always there, and although a good man must go down those mean streets, there's no guarantee he'll win, or even survive?

It is to cry.

Towne's original ending had Evelyn getting off for her father's murder--he's just winged in the final movie version--and then a rain was to have fallen on the city, metaphorically relieving it of its drought. Supposedly, Towne referred to Polanski's darkening of his script as "the tunnel at the end of the light." In the end, the survivor's can only rage against it all, and go on living.

The Two Jakes, the long-delayed and trouble-plagued sequel, builds on it, resulting in one of the most powerful and effective sequels to ever come out of Hollywood; a true sequel in every sense of the word that picks up on and expands upon the narrative and thematic concerns of the first film.

How do you deal with the past when you can't forget it, and you can't change it?

Unfortunately, Chinatown's success, both artistically and commercially, almost ensured the negative reception of the much-maligned The Two Jakes. The original plan was to trace the history of California through three films, all featuring Jake, but it was only in 1990 that the second film finally popped up. It was a troubled production almost from the start, with producer Robert Evans, writer/director Robert Towne and star Nicholson all falling out, and Nicholson left to pick up the pieces, and taking over the director's chores. That it turned out to be such a focussed and concentrated film, that every scene fell into place like dominoes, seems to have escaped the notice of most critics. Evidently, its biggest fault was that it wasn't Chinatown. But then, few films are.

It certainly wasn't your standard private eye flick, either. As Roger Ebert put it, "It's an exquisite short story about a mood, and a time, and a couple of guys who are blind-sided by love," as Jake finds himself at the top of the heap, professionally speaking, the "leper with the most fingers."

It's postwar Los Angeles - the 1940s of the baby boom and housing subdivisions - and Jake has moved up the social ladder. He's still digging up the dirt in divorce cases, as jaded and cynical as ever. "I suppose it's fair to say infidelity made me what I am today," he jokes as the film begins, but he's not laughing. Sure, he has his own building now, and he even belongs to a country club. He has a fiancee and a gut. But the past haunts him. And then, in a barely decipherable aside in a conversation between two adulterous lovers, caught forever on a piece of recording tape, the past comes calling.

With a vengeance.

UNDER OATHThe Two Jakes was almost universally panned when it first appeared, but it does have its defenders, and some of their quite perceptive and passionate comments deserve to be heard:.

"...what we have here is the kind of plot that any private eye movie might have been proud of. But The Two Jakes uses the plot only as an occasion for the deeper and more brooding things it has to say. Everyone connected with this movie seems to have gone through the private eye genre and come out on the other side. The screenplay is by Robert Towne, who at one stage in the project's troubled history was going to direct it. He has not simply assembled some characters from his "Chinatown," added some new ones, and thrown them into a plot. This movie is written with meticulous care, to show how good and evil are never as simple as they seem, and to demonstrate that even the motives of a villain may emerge from a goodness of heart.....
The movie really is about the values that people have, and about the things that mean more to them than life and freedom. It's a deep movie, and a thoughtful one, and when it's over you can't easily put it out of your mind."
-- Roger Ebert

"The Two Jakes is a good period detective film, a wonderful second chance to spend time with Jake Gittes, and a loving, bittersweet coda to a masterpiece. Having read the screenplay, I only wish Nicholson had cut the film differently -- he omitted some of the more overt detective elements, particularly in the courtroom scene conclusion, which would have helped the picture connect with a wider audience. It's a lovely sad story on its own terms and Harvey Keitel is incredible, getting every nuance out of a well-written role, courtesy of Robert Towne...People are really idiots when it comes to sequels. They almost never give them a fair shake. And yet they go. If the idea of a sequel offends you, shut up and stay home."
-- Max Allan Collins, The January Magazine Interview.

"All this talk of The Two Jakes gave me an excuse to pull out my copy and watch it again. While I will agree that it's no Chinatown (and please tell me what is) I will also agree that it is VERY underrated....
I loved (the film's) sense of post-war L.A. Great atmosphere. The wardrobe, production design, and photography are not only top rate, but qualify as American Art. I'm surprised it didn't pick up award nominations in those categories....But the biggest blame for whatever shortcomings of the film rests with Jack. As a director, not an actor..
Nicholson's direction is overly cautious and this leads to a general feeling that there is a lack of focus...I'm watching the film for the second time in two days and I think I know
where Jack went wrong. He assumed that the audience would be paying VERY close attention. It's all there. You just have to magnify certain parts of the film to pull the deeper meanings from them. His faith in us was ballsy...and misguided....He takes his sweet time laying it all out, dropping pieces of the puzzle in sometimes miniscule increments, but the final moments of the film play as a fantastic coda to all that has come before and the entire movie displays a Ross Macdonald-like obsession with the past that is quite satisfying. The last thirty seconds of the film remind me of a great book that reveals its true nature in the last paragraph, altering and enhancing your feelings of all you have witnessed up to that point..
It's too bad that the bitterness between Towne, Evans, and Nicholson and the lackluster box office performance of The Two Jakes will probably keep us from ever seeing the third installment of this proposed trilogy. I'd love to see what Jake gets up to in the fifties...

I thought it was a noble if somewhat confused effort...Certainly a fine entry in the very limited P.I. genre of the last twenty years. Not much has given Chinatown a run for its money since 1975. The Two Jakes gives it a shot. It falls short, but at least they tried.
-- Terrill Lankford.".

"This morning I had two hours and twenty minutes that I didn't need an alibi for, so I watched the movie again. It's more than fair to try to explain what I see in it and why I think it's better (in some ways) than its classic parent..
Like all good pee eye stories, it's about truth: its facades; how malleable it is. It's a continuation of a thought, more than a sequel. I like the idea of a wife to protect and divorce. I like the earthquakes, the atmospheres, the very specific references to Los Angeles, even the crack about Patton coming from Pasadena..
I like the casual sex (as casual as the racism.) Poor Jake gets his head thumped getting laid. "I'm trying to be a gentleman. Get down on your knees. Put your ass in the air." He needs a drink of water and a chance to catch his breath..
I like that there's a rainbow of motives and agendas, and nobody knows what the next one's up to. Even if Gittes says, it's "as plain as the shoes on his feet." Those shoes, BTW, I remember the propmaster saying when the movie came out that he had been holding onto those two-toned shoes for a dozen years -- waiting for Jack to make the movie. I like the second last scene with the American flag. It reminds me of Errol Flynn and Custer's Last Stand. I like the Ross Macdonald last scene..
I like the movie because it isn't as technically pure as Chinatown. I've seen (and read) too many technically pure stories lately. Sometimes they feel soulless, no matter what their message. The Two Jakes has a soul that's more baroque, more of a "twisted pearl.".Chinatown is young genius. The Two Jakes is about the ponderance that years (and mileage) give people. It's a middle-age movie. Yeah, we gain memories along with the weight. (Listen to the voiceover about Lou Escobar losing a leg.) Gittes is no longer sleek with youth, and Nicholson huffs and puffs like he's climbing up three flights of stairs. He looks like something the cat's been dragging through the house. Gittes has been smacked with entropy (but doesn't see it,) and only the mention of Katherine Mulwray can quicken his pulse. Nicholson is more than willing not to be movie-star pretty, which cost him & his cohorts many tickets at the box office....Gittes is less clean, and he knows it; he calls himself "the leper with the most fingers."
-- Frederick Zackel, writer of Cocaine and Blue Eyes

EVIDENCE

"Let me explain something to you, Walsh. This business requires a certain amount of finesse."
-- Jake offers some advice.

"You may think you know what you're dealing with but believe me, you don't."

Evelyn Mulwray: What were you doing (in Chinatown)?Jake: Working for the district attorney.Evelyn: Doing what?Jake: As little as possible.Evelyn: The district attorney gives his men advice like that?Jake: They do in Chinatown..